Reality TV has exploded over the past few years becoming one of the biggest money makers for television channels and one of the most popular genres to date. One of the biggest reality show to in recent years is MTV's the Jersey Shore. Jersey Shore premiered on December 9, 2009 in the United States. The series follows the lives of eight housemates living together for the summer at the Jersey Shore. Season 2 followed the cast to Miami Beach and Season 3 returned back to the Jersey Shore. Due to its popularity, MTV has announced that a fourth season will be filmed in Italy for 2011. The show has created large amounts of controversy due to the portrayals of Italian American stereotypes, and all the drama that unfolds with 8 eight party animals under one roof. The series has earned record ratings for MTV, making it the network's most viewed series telecast ever. The series has since exported to dozens of countries worldwide.
So why has this cultural phenomenon become so popular? Why do people watch the Jersey Shore? Personally, I feel a lot of people watch reality shows such as the Jersey Shore to experience things they can not or have not experienced in there own life. Watching shows such as this creates a link of exploring a lifestyle unknown to them. Shows like Jersey Shore allow us to use our imagination and enter into a world of excitement and chaos. Not everyone watching the program may relate to the crazy lifestyle of the show. I may relate to certain aspects, but my life is drastically different then that of the roommates. Yet, I can stop watching...what will come next? more drama, more fighting, more crazy styles, more stupidity! The people I know personally that are fans of the show, are as different from the cast as you could imagine. It's hard to see how a show like Jersey Shore could appeal to such a huge range of people. What is intriguing is the Jersey Shore gives us an opportunity to live vicariously through a group of people we have nothing in common with, and experience situations we would never confront in our normal lives. Bottom line is Jersey Shore is intriguing, entertaining and shocking!
What would Nietzsche think.....
File:Portrait of Friedrich Nietzsche.jpg
" BY MORALITY THE INDIVIDUAL IS TAUGHT TO BECOME A FUNCTION OF THE HERD, AND TO ASCRIBE TO HIMSELF VALUE AS A FUNCTION." -Friedrich Nietzsche
Friedrich Nietzsche was a German philosopher of the late 19th century with a central ideal of "life-affirmation". His philosophy is to be an artist of your own destiny and live a life no one has ever lived before. This philosophy has inspired many leading figures in all walks of cultural life, including dancers, poets, novelists, painters, psychologists, philosophers, sociologists and social revolutionaries. Nietzsche would encourage society to live in our existing world as best as we possibly can. It would seem to appear the cast of the Jersey Shore is celebrating their lifestyle in a very Nietzsche way; however this is a false reality. Nietzsche would prefer individuals of master morality with self-confidence and freedom of self-expression over that of the slave or herd morality. In Nietzsche's moral philosophy, slave morality is a morality that takes duties and obligations as primary, so called because it was the morality of the slaves who were not to aspire any higher than mere efficiency and personal comfort. Slave morality consists of individuals that defer their desires, they are judgmental, and start to feel resentment.
We would assume the cast of the Jersey Shore appear to have master morality with their personal expression and carefree nature, but this is just an act. These characters are conforming to a role they think they need to be therefore they fall under the role of slave morality. These “Guido/Guidets” are hired to model a false reality of the Italian American lifestyle. They are staged, scripted, and edited to create entertainment. No one in the cast is really being themselves; instead they are slaves trying to fill a role, this glimpse into their daily life is a complete false reality. In fact, reality television doesn’t actually exist because individuals are hired to fill a role and try to fit into a life they are perceived to have.
The cast of the Jersey shore may be living out a fabulous destiny of fame but they are not truly living it, their characters are. The characters they are portraying as a role are actually living this fame. The cast has a very false sense of reality, they barely work, they are given everything they want, and are able to indulge themselves in useless activities. The drama on the show is played up and edited to the fullest capacity making the cast look even more outrageous and even foolish. This lifestyle is scripted for them making them slaves to their own morality.
Cast member Nicole widely known as Snooki, is looking to meet the man of her dreams. When she goes to the gym, she goes in full makeup, and over the top attire. She is constantly in the media and continues to draw attention to herself by any means necessary. Snooki must play up her role as a ditsy "Guidet" when in actuality she is adopted, is not of Italian decent, and does not live in New Jersey. Although Nicole may always been an attention craver, Snooki is a character that demands the spotlight in a big way and for big pay. Her entire life revolves around keeping up the persona of Snooki making her a slave to her own identity. The following clips freature Snooki and some of the othere female roomates as they discuss sex and leaving the Jersey shore.
Cast members Sammi and Ronnie are well known for their crazed relationship, fighting, and making up again. They no longer have separate identiies, they are one. You will rearley tune into the program without seeing one without the other, or fighting. They are protrayed in a very negative way to highten the dramatic effects of the show and boost ratings. The following episode features Sammi, Ronnie, Snooki, Deena in just one of the many drunken confrontations that have erupted over the seasons.
Cast member Vinny came into the house and was quiet, funny, and respected his family. He was most unlike the other male cast, but as season 2 and 3 approached, so did Vinny. He plays into the "Guido" persona by tanning, going to the gym, and sleeping with lots of women. The following clip features Vinny and Pauly D.
Cast member Jenni is best known as JWOWW, She is impulsive and spontaneous, and a party girl with zero self control. Wherever she goes, drama is, every episode she seems to come back with mutiple procedures to "improve" her image. Breast implants, lip enhancemnts, barley there cloths, she plays up the role as the 'sexy" one. The following clip features JWOOW and Mike as he discusses the idea of sleeping with his other roommates.
Cast member Mike, is known as "The Situation", his role is the self-centered ladies man. He is often sneaky and kiniving and has a lots of drama with his roommates. He loves to play up this role by refering to himself in the third person and showing off his abs.
Cast member Pauly or Pauly D is a DJ from Rhode Island. He play into his "Guido" role by keeping a tanning bed in his house and ordering gel by the case, doing his hair twice a day. His is known to use his looks and status to get as many woman asumanly possible. The following clip is my personal favorite, it gives the perfect insite into the Jersey Shore cast character!
.....As we can see, Nicole, Sammi, Ronnie, Vinny, Mike, and Paul all fall under the slave morality with there primary duty to entertain us with the characters set out for them. Nietzshe would encourage the cast to break away from these roles and develop his or her own virtues to become excellent in as many ways possible.
Read the following exert taken from the following article
Let's look at the moment of highest dysfunction from the most recent episode. Arguably, this moment unfolded when Sammi punched Ronnie in the face for talking to J-wow. We'll need some context (you can already see why cultural critics with an eye toward societal health would have a problem with this show). Sammi and Ronnie had been arguing about their relationship, as they are prone to do. A familiar pattern emerged in which Sammi flung slightly paranoid, unfounded accusations at Ronnie. The ever-insecure Sammi demanded to know if the ever-defensive Ronnie had been cheating on her (as he did once before). Problematically, Sammi could not present any actual evidence to support her fear. Interpersonally, they hit a brick wall. And for Ronnie this was one false accusation too many. He declared the relationship dead, packed her bags and went downstairs to remorsefully smoke a cigarette. Outside, he helped to diffuse his overwhelmed emotional state by talking to J-Wow. Sammi, still angry, hurt, and confused and still too unskilled to reduce and sort out these emotions, spies this interaction from the balcony. She channels all of her emotion into another irrational idea that probably sounded like something like this: "Ronnie has been sneaking around my back with J-Wow...I always knew I couldn't trust him....and now they are making fun of me together." Sammi ran downstairs, screamed at Ronnie, and demanded confirmation of her suspicions. Ronnie didn't know what to do so he kept his mouth shut (freezing in response to getting yelled at is fairly common). A few minutes later Sammie punched Ronnie in the face and retreated. A few hours later they were back together again. Ok, so our animalistic nature may have been sucked into a few brief seconds of this exchange in the same way that we cannot look away from a fiery car wreck. But this is short-term satisfaction. After all, five minutes after glancing at the fiery car wreck we have either forgotten about it entirely or are sitting with a bad taste in our mouths, disturbed at our need to have looked in the first place. I would imagine we harbor similar feelings toward Sammi and Ronnie and, by extension, the show. In addition to feeling put-off, I would also postulate that we feel bored. We've seen these same arguments and outcomes many times before. Freud, the founder of psychoanalysis, believed that mental illness led to unresolved emotional states and that those states were liable to pop up time and again with increasingly frequency and intensity. He might agree that there is a repetitive, and familiar feel to the Ronnie-Sammi interactions. Things are getting stale. We can see it in the exacerbated faces of the other Jersey Shore cast members and we can feel it as viewers as we roll our eyes at the television screen. The Jersey Shore: Does dysfunction really make for good drama?
click here view full articleRex Murphy, one of Canada's sharpest and most accomplished political commentators, explains that the environment of our common consciousness is television and the Internet. And, like it or loathe it, Jersey Shore is part of our collective consciousness.
==="I mean, you don't have to want to marry Snooki to watch it," he said. "But as long as you're aware of it, at least you know the world you're in. But this idea that you seal yourself off in some purist castle and read Descartes and Kant and snub the world, it's idiocy! And as I often say in this kind of context, Moby Dick really is a great book and you really should read it more than once but you shouldn't read it every day. It's a bad habit." (Source: George Stroumboulopoulos Tonight, interview with Rex Murphy, May 3, 2011)
=The following are fans/skeptics opionions taken from a recent MTV forum:
I am new around here and I am so excited to be talking about my favorite show. I was just wondering if you all have some friends who do not watch the show and have have mad comments to make about how they think JS is bad TV. Bad TV? Are you kidding me? This is entertainment!!
What do you say when friends comment about how bad JS is?
Thank you all and tomorrow is our night for awesome TV!
=
k let me get this strait america your going to give this little nasty fat wh### a tv show but we cant have enough money to give or wonderful troops money for giving there lives to defend this beautiful nation i think we should take a step back into reality and make a desicion now cause this is rediciulous we dont need to watch this little @#$% going around and sleeping with anything that talks to her come on america if we have any humanity left in us we would stop this from happining we dont need nicole in our lives if we want to watch who### we can watch ppv lets do it people come on if we ban together we can rid of this sL## and do something more worth it like support our troops i bet she couldnt even tell u where our wonderful troops or even fighting god bless the usa and down with dirty fat little nasty who### thank u for your time
Even Anderson Cooper gives us some insite on his opinion-
Anderson Cooper Slams Jersey Shore's Snooki (And the People Who Make Her Rich)
click here to view full article
will never understand why people watch The Jersey Shore. I just don't get it. Maybe "its a Jersey thing," that a simple Kentucky boy like me just can't fully grasp, but every time I see a clip or article on this show I can't help but wonder why everyone is so fascinated by this crap. I may not be qualified to argue that this show is as bad as it is. I've never seen a single episode. I've only seen clips and highlights on other shows that poke fun at it's absurdity. Thankfully, respected journalist Anderson Cooper decided it was time to give his two cents on The Jersey Shore, focusing specifically on one character ... Snooki......
"Music Television Network's" The Jersey Shore. It sickens me. Thank you, Anderson Cooper, for speaking your piece on this issue.
Megan Bosque
Philosophy and the Jeresy Shore
Why do people watch the popular show
Reality TV has exploded over the past few years becoming one of the biggest money makers for television channels and one of the most popular genres to date. One of the biggest reality show to in recent years is MTV's the Jersey Shore. Jersey Shore premiered on December 9, 2009 in the United States. The series follows the lives of eight housemates living together for the summer at the Jersey Shore. Season 2 followed the cast to Miami Beach and Season 3 returned back to the Jersey Shore. Due to its popularity, MTV has announced that a fourth season will be filmed in Italy for 2011. The show has created large amounts of controversy due to the portrayals of Italian American stereotypes, and all the drama that unfolds with 8 eight party animals under one roof. The series has earned record ratings for MTV, making it the network's most viewed series telecast ever. The series has since exported to dozens of countries worldwide.
So why has this cultural phenomenon become so popular? Why do people watch the Jersey Shore? Personally, I feel a lot of people watch reality shows such as the Jersey Shore to experience things they can not or have not experienced in there own life. Watching shows such as this creates a link of exploring a lifestyle unknown to them. Shows like Jersey Shore allow us to use our imagination and enter into a world of excitement and chaos. Not everyone watching the program may relate to the crazy lifestyle of the show. I may relate to certain aspects, but my life is drastically different then that of the roommates. Yet, I can stop watching...what will come next? more drama, more fighting, more crazy styles, more stupidity! The people I know personally that are fans of the show, are as different from the cast as you could imagine. It's hard to see how a show like Jersey Shore could appeal to such a huge range of people. What is intriguing is the Jersey Shore gives us an opportunity to live vicariously through a group of people we have nothing in common with, and experience situations we would never confront in our normal lives. Bottom line is Jersey Shore is intriguing, entertaining and shocking!
What would Nietzsche think.....
" BY MORALITY THE INDIVIDUAL IS TAUGHT TO BECOME A FUNCTION OF THE HERD, AND TO ASCRIBE TO HIMSELF VALUE AS A FUNCTION."
-Friedrich Nietzsche
Friedrich Nietzsche was a German philosopher of the late 19th century with a central ideal of "life-affirmation". His philosophy is to be an artist of your own destiny and live a life no one has ever lived before. This philosophy has inspired many leading figures in all walks of cultural life, including dancers, poets, novelists, painters, psychologists, philosophers, sociologists and social revolutionaries. Nietzsche would encourage society to live in our existing world as best as we possibly can. It would seem to appear the cast of the Jersey Shore is celebrating their lifestyle in a very Nietzsche way; however this is a false reality. Nietzsche would prefer individuals of master morality with self-confidence and freedom of self-expression over that of the slave or herd morality. In Nietzsche's moral philosophy, slave morality is a morality that takes duties and obligations as primary, so called because it was the morality of the slaves who were not to aspire any higher than mere efficiency and personal comfort. Slave morality consists of individuals that defer their desires, they are judgmental, and start to feel resentment.
We would assume the cast of the Jersey Shore appear to have master morality with their personal expression and carefree nature, but this is just an act. These characters are conforming to a role they think they need to be therefore they fall under the role of slave morality. These “Guido/Guidets” are hired to model a false reality of the Italian American lifestyle. They are staged, scripted, and edited to create entertainment. No one in the cast is really being themselves; instead they are slaves trying to fill a role, this glimpse into their daily life is a complete false reality. In fact, reality television doesn’t actually exist because individuals are hired to fill a role and try to fit into a life they are perceived to have.
The cast of the Jersey shore may be living out a fabulous destiny of fame but they are not truly living it, their characters are. The characters they are portraying as a role are actually living this fame. The cast has a very false sense of reality, they barely work, they are given everything they want, and are able to indulge themselves in useless activities. The drama on the show is played up and edited to the fullest capacity making the cast look even more outrageous and even foolish. This lifestyle is scripted for them making them slaves to their own morality.MTV Jersey Shore clips, bios, pics, episodes, and more!
Cast member Nicole widely known as Snooki, is looking to meet the man of her dreams. When she goes to the gym, she goes in full makeup, and over the top attire. She is constantly in the media and continues to draw attention to herself by any means necessary. Snooki must play up her role as a ditsy "Guidet" when in actuality she is adopted, is not of Italian decent, and does not live in New Jersey. Although Nicole may always been an attention craver, Snooki is a character that demands the spotlight in a big way and for big pay. Her entire life revolves around keeping up the persona of Snooki making her a slave to her own identity. The following clips freature Snooki and some of the othere female roomates as they discuss sex and leaving the Jersey shore.
Cast members Sammi and Ronnie are well known for their crazed relationship, fighting, and making up again. They no longer have separate identiies, they are one. You will rearley tune into the program without seeing one without the other, or fighting. They are protrayed in a very negative way to highten the dramatic effects of the show and boost ratings. The following episode features Sammi, Ronnie, Snooki, Deena in just one of the many drunken confrontations that have erupted over the seasons.
Cast member Vinny came into the house and was quiet, funny, and respected his family. He was most unlike the other male cast, but as season 2 and 3 approached, so did Vinny. He plays into the "Guido" persona by tanning, going to the gym, and sleeping with lots of women. The following clip features Vinny and Pauly D.
Cast member Jenni is best known as JWOWW, She is impulsive and spontaneous, and a party girl with zero self control. Wherever she goes, drama is, every episode she seems to come back with mutiple procedures to "improve" her image. Breast implants, lip enhancemnts, barley there cloths, she plays up the role as the 'sexy" one. The following clip features JWOOW and Mike as he discusses the idea of sleeping with his other roommates.
Cast member Mike, is known as "The Situation", his role is the self-centered ladies man. He is often sneaky and kiniving and has a lots of drama with his roommates. He loves to play up this role by refering to himself in the third person and showing off his abs.
Cast member Pauly or Pauly D is a DJ from Rhode Island. He play into his "Guido" role by keeping a tanning bed in his house and ordering gel by the case, doing his hair twice a day. His is known to use his looks and status to get as many woman asumanly possible. The following clip is my personal favorite, it gives the perfect insite into the Jersey Shore cast character!
.....As we can see, Nicole, Sammi, Ronnie, Vinny, Mike, and Paul all fall under the slave morality with there primary duty to entertain us with the characters set out for them. Nietzshe would encourage the cast to break away from these roles and develop his or her own virtues to become excellent in as many ways possible.
Read the following exert taken from the following article
click link below to view the full article
The Jersey Shore: Does dysfunction really make for good drama?
Let's look at the moment of highest dysfunction from the most recent episode. Arguably, this moment unfolded when Sammi punched Ronnie in the face for talking to J-wow. We'll need some context (you can already see why cultural critics with an eye toward societal health would have a problem with this show). Sammi and Ronnie had been arguing about their relationship, as they are prone to do. A familiar pattern emerged in which Sammi flung slightly paranoid, unfounded accusations at Ronnie. The ever-insecure Sammi demanded to know if the ever-defensive Ronnie had been cheating on her (as he did once before). Problematically, Sammi could not present any actual evidence to support her fear. Interpersonally, they hit a brick wall. And for Ronnie this was one false accusation too many. He declared the relationship dead, packed her bags and went downstairs to remorsefully smoke a cigarette. Outside, he helped to diffuse his overwhelmed emotional state by talking to J-Wow. Sammi, still angry, hurt, and confused and still too unskilled to reduce and sort out these emotions, spies this interaction from the balcony. She channels all of her emotion into another irrational idea that probably sounded like something like this: "Ronnie has been sneaking around my back with J-Wow...I always knew I couldn't trust him....and now they are making fun of me together." Sammi ran downstairs, screamed at Ronnie, and demanded confirmation of her suspicions. Ronnie didn't know what to do so he kept his mouth shut (freezing in response to getting yelled at is fairly common).
A few minutes later Sammie punched Ronnie in the face and retreated.
A few hours later they were back together again.
Ok, so our animalistic nature may have been sucked into a few brief seconds of this exchange in the same way that we cannot look away from a fiery car wreck. But this is short-term satisfaction. After all, five minutes after glancing at the fiery car wreck we have either forgotten about it entirely or are sitting with a bad taste in our mouths, disturbed at our need to have looked in the first place. I would imagine we harbor similar feelings toward Sammi and Ronnie and, by extension, the show. In addition to feeling put-off, I would also postulate that we feel bored.
We've seen these same arguments and outcomes many times before. Freud, the founder of psychoanalysis, believed that mental illness led to unresolved emotional states and that those states were liable to pop up time and again with increasingly frequency and intensity. He might agree that there is a repetitive, and familiar feel to the Ronnie-Sammi interactions. Things are getting stale. We can see it in the exacerbated faces of the other Jersey Shore cast members and we can feel it as viewers as we roll our eyes at the television screen.
The Jersey Shore: Does dysfunction really make for good drama?
==
==
Another great article
**Why people watch Reality TV**
=Steven Reiss=The Ohio State University//**==We assessed the appeal of reality TV by asking 239 adults to rate themselves on==
each of 16 basic motives using the Reiss Profile standardized instrument and to
rate how much they watched and enjoyed various reality television shows. The
results suggested that the people who watched reality television had above-average
trait motivation to feel self-important and, to a lesser extent, vindicated,
friendly, free of morality, secure, and romantic, as compared with large normative
samples. The results, which were dose-dependent, showed a new method for
studying media. This method is based on evidence that people have the potential
to experience 16 different joys. People prefer television shows that stimulate the
feelings they intrinsically value the most, which depends on individuality.
===In defense of Jersey Shore===
click here view full articleRex Murphy, one of Canada's sharpest and most accomplished political commentators, explains that the environment of our common consciousness is television and the Internet. And, like it or loathe it, Jersey Shore is part of our collective consciousness.
==="I mean, you don't have to want to marry Snooki to watch it," he said. "But as long as you're aware of it, at least you know the world you're in. But this idea that you seal yourself off in some purist castle and read Descartes and Kant and snub the world, it's idiocy! And as I often say in this kind of context, Moby Dick really is a great book and you really should read it more than once but you shouldn't read it every day. It's a bad habit." (Source: George Stroumboulopoulos Tonight, interview with Rex Murphy, May 3, 2011)
=The following are fans/skeptics opionions taken from a recent MTV forum:
=
How do you all feel about the Jersey Shore...
Hi Everyone!
I am new around here and I am so excited to be talking about my favorite show. I was just wondering if you all have some friends who do not watch the show and have have mad comments to make about how they think JS is bad TV. Bad TV? Are you kidding me? This is entertainment!!
What do you say when friends comment about how bad JS is?
Thank you all and tomorrow is our night for awesome TV!
wtf america whats wrong with you
k let me get this strait america your going to give this little nasty fat wh### a tv show but we cant have enough money to give or wonderful troops money for giving there lives to defend this beautiful nation i think we should take a step back into reality and make a desicion now cause this is rediciulous we dont need to watch this little @#$% going around and sleeping with anything that talks to her come on america if we have any humanity left in us we would stop this from happining we dont need nicole in our lives if we want to watch who### we can watch ppv lets do it people come on if we ban together we can rid of this sL## and do something more worth it like support our troops i bet she couldnt even tell u where our wonderful troops or even fighting god bless the usa and down with dirty fat little nasty who### thank u for your time
Even Anderson Cooper gives us some insite on his opinion-
Anderson Cooper Slams Jersey Shore's Snooki (And the People Who Make Her Rich)
click here to view full articlewill never understand why people watch The Jersey Shore. I just don't get it. Maybe "its a Jersey thing," that a simple Kentucky boy like me just can't fully grasp, but every time I see a clip or article on this show I can't help but wonder why everyone is so fascinated by this crap. I may not be qualified to argue that this show is as bad as it is. I've never seen a single episode. I've only seen clips and highlights on other shows that poke fun at it's absurdity. Thankfully, respected journalist Anderson Cooper decided it was time to give his two cents on The Jersey Shore, focusing specifically on one character ... Snooki......
"Music Television Network's" The Jersey Shore. It sickens me. Thank you, Anderson Cooper, for speaking your piece on this issue.
Another article-
The Philospher's Stoned: Jersey Shore
Work Cited:
Solomon, Robert. Introducing Philosophy. Oxford University Press:2008.